Kiwi Town

So last night was American Night at Scott Base.  Scott Base is the New Zealand base just on the other side of the hill from McMurdo.  Their base is much smaller, and all of their buildings are the same mint-green color.  Apparently the designer was fond of Welsh farmlands or something, all that green pasture with white houses, so he inverted that scheme.  I also heard that was the favorite color of someone.  Anyways, the shuttle ride over took only a few minutes.  Normally Americans are not allowed on Scott Base unless they have an invite, except to use the store.  I guess American Night is one such 'invited' night, held every Thursday.  When I got there I hit their store first, bought a hat, a Scott base patch, and a couple plush animals for my nephews.  I decided to get my niece the penguin from the McMurdo store.  They have some nice things over there, but anything with possum fur was expensive.  

After that I hit the bar.  Its a decent-sized room with a pool table, a piano (with a stuffed Kiwi bird on it), and plenty of chairs.  Apparently since the Kiwis don't have tipping in their country, any money tossed into an upturned tambourine was turned into drink money.  If you ordered a drink while there was enough money in the till your drink was effectively paid for.  And thus I wound up having five drinks throughout the course of the evening without having to pay for any of them (though an auspicious combination of tambourine change, donated liquor and shot ski).  

Fortunately/unfortunately I did not get drunk, which was probably a good thing in hindsight given the experience with my roommate a week back.  I wound up tossing $5 US into the tambourine after I was done.  I stuck around for three hours before finally calling it a night, getting back on the shuttle and crawling into bed once I got back.

The interesting thing about the Kiwi base is that all their buildings are connected by short hallways, so they never really need to go outside.  It probably helps that their base is much, much smaller.  Also, their bathrooms were AMAZING.  Why can't we have nice things? (Oh yeah, NSF budget cuts due to rising fuel costs).

Today was another Condition 2.  It was COLD and WINDY and it did not help that I had to work on new office trailers, some of which were unheated while the rest of the time I was outside.  I wound up pulling on my nice, furry bomber hat which worked very nicely.  Somehow a task which should have taken the better part of the morning ended up taking all day, but it was five trailers, two people, and a lot of scratching our heads, but James and I were glad we got to work on something independently and without supervision.

Just to make things interesting, a crew in town was installing a new telephone pole a few feet from one of the trailers we were working on.  We had to made sure we cleared out by 10:30, as they were blasting through the permafrost underground.  We watched the event from the carpentry shop break room, but all we heard was a faint 'thud' with nothing to look at.  I guess the blankets made of truck tires takes the excitement out of it.

Not much else is happening, especially since I've been updating every couple of days now.  I hope you don't get spoiled and start expecting daily updates with new photos each time, though I do try and come up with something!